By Nur Ashikin Louis
KUCHING, March 3: Sarawak is still waiting for the Federal government to formally ink the agreement before they can start the construction of the Sarawak Cancer Centre, says Deputy Premier Dato Sri Dr Sim Kui Hian.
“If they don’t sign, when we build later on, they don’t want to pay (sic),” he told reporters after the opening ceremony of Coloproctology 2023 Conference held at a hotel here today.
Dr Sim, who is also Minister of Public Health, Housing and Local Government, further said that the Sarawak Health Department and Sarawak General Hospital (SGH) have presented the details of the project to the Ministry of Health (MOH) which is pending the finalisation of the total number of beds.
He explained that the number of beds has yet to be determined not because of not knowing the price of beds but rather of weighing the immediate need of bed capacity planning.
“It depends on whether we want 300, 400 or 500 beds to cater for the future. The 300 beds cost about RM800 million, 400 beds are about RM1 billion and 500 beds are RM1.2 billion.
“This is because sometimes when you do hospital planning, you may not need to have so many beds right away but you need to have the space (for expansion). Otherwise, you will need to rebuild again.
“So to all those politicians who are just trying to attract cheap publicity (by saying) Dr Sim is confused and doesn’t know how much (bed price), they are the ones who are confused because they do not know about hospital planning,” he added.– DayakDaily
